Wireless Growing Pains?

I hope so. I've got two different wireless adapters in my PC right now, so that I have a better chance of getting at least one of them to work. LOL

I just noticed that my wireless is broken trying to get it working from new 6.5 Beta 7 Live CD, too (even though it still works from a hard disk install that's been upgraded to Beta 7).

So, something must have changed in the more recent betas impacting this adapter (rt2570 chipset). That's just my luck. I haven't figured out what changed to break it yet (especially since it's still working from an install that was originally beta 2 that's been updated periodically and is now beta 7).

But, it definitely won't work from a beta 7 live cd using any technique I've tried so far (and I've always been able to get it working with every 6.0 release and newer 6.x beta to date, except for this new beta 7).

I've got another one in the PC I can use via ndiswrapper in a pinch though (a Netgear WG311v3 with one of the Marvell chipsets in it).

Jim C.

I've been lucky -- I have Broadcom, Netgear WG311v2 (acx), and ipw2200 -- very few problems with any of them

I did have a problem once with a Netgear exactly the same as the one I have -- A friend bought the same card I have and tried to insert it into the same make and model of old Gateway desktop that I am using (it's a PCI card). For some reason, just inserting the card caused hardware problems ( other devices not recognized, etc.) I just removed the card and he is happy with a wired connection -- we did not try any more with the wireless card. I suspect that inserting it in another slot or something like that might have helped, but I don't know ...

I find native drivers often more difficult than ndiswrapper ... bcm43xx is tricky to get working, and I have never got the acx native driver to work ... very few problems with ipw2200 ... a concern is that older or less common native drivers, say rtl8180, may not be supported in a newer kernel.

Mike

Yep, I hate it when that happens.

For example, my Belkin rt2570 based adapter worked fine in PCLinuxOS 0.92. But, it doesn't work in newer versions.

When I asked about it in the forums when I was trying the newer 0.93 releases, they said a newer chipset was causing conflicts so they decided to remove the one that I have from the distro (although they did give me some steps that I could use to install a driver for it, but only from a hard disk install, not running from the Live CD, and I'd need network access (and I do not have a wired connection to this PC).

I argued (to no avail) that they should have kept the existing rt2570 one in instead (since it's a very common chipset and removing the driver would impact a lot of people). They went the other way with it (removed it to get a newer one working since it was causing a conflict). So, no more PCLinuxOS for me. I didn't even bother to download the newer test releases after this card driver got removed from 0.93 (when it was in 0.92).

Grrrrr.. I hate it when hardware works fine in one release, and not in the next release, and wireless seems to be the most common hardware impacted.

Jim C.

I had tried to install my Netgear WG311 many times, but it seem cann't work at all.
Do you use the WG311 V2? I will try this version, ... or buy others that you say, like ipw2200.
Thanks for this message.

(outside link removed by moderator)

I've got a netgear wg311v3 that works with ndiswrapper.

You do have to remove the existing mrv8k5i driver that's already installed in ndiswrapper first before installing the one that comes with the card.

But, something isn't quite right with the way it gets along with SimplyMEPIS 6.0.

The Operating System will lock hard about half the time upon bootup with it in the PC.

The problem does not seem to exist in 6.5 Final.

I have yanked the card to keep from locking up my PC half the time when booting into 6.0, though. It's sitting on a shelf in my closet right this minute.

As long as you get a good boot without a lockup, it's stable in 6.0.

But, I prefer to use my Belkin USB wireless adapter. I get a much better signal with it, and the rt2570 driver is already in most distros (no need for ndiswrapper).

Note that I wouldn't suggest using this adapter (an rt2570 based Belkin) with 6.5 if you need to get wireless working from a Live CD. You can use it from a Live CD with 6.0 Final, 6.0-4 Beta 1 through Beta 4, and a number of other distros (for example, Ubuntu 6.06, 6.10, 7.04 and more) from a Live CD if you use iwconfig and dhclient to bring it up

But, it won't work with any MEPIS releases after 6.0-4 Beta 4. It will work if you have a hard disk install though (some kind of quirk with the releases after 6.0-4 Beta 4 require a reboot to get this rt2570 based adapter to work). Just my luck. lol

You should be able to get that wg311v2 card working pretty easily with ndiswrapper though (even from a Live CD). From what I understand, it's a more popular card compared to the v3 like I've got.

See my post in this thread and try the same steps (substituting wg311v2 for wg311v3) and see if it comes up. The post was about 6.0. But, it should also work with 6.5:

http://www.mepis.org/node/11402

Jim C.

For the current version of Mepis, you probably need to edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist as root and add
blacklist acx
to the file

Then you should be able to copy wg311v2.inf and wg311v2.sys drivers from Windows (or download them from Netgear site) to a folder in linux and
ndiswrapper -i wg311v2.inf
as root in that folder
should get things going

http://www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.php/Using_Ndiswrapper

Mike

I was not recommending these cards in the above post, Broadcom are tricky and ipw2200 only is available integral to a laptop -- just mentioning my good luck in getting them working.